Archive:Sane Ubuntu XBMC Setup: Difference between revisions
>Cosmicr m (this is a double up of HOW-TO install XBMC for Linux on Ubuntu, a Step-by-Step Guide, which is better written) |
>NedBot m (Bot: Fixing double redirect to How-to:Install XBMC on Ubuntu; cosmetic changes) |
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# | #REDIRECT [[How-to:Install XBMC on Ubuntu]] | ||
== A basic but sane way of building an XBMC install on top of Ubuntu == | == A basic but sane way of building an XBMC install on top of Ubuntu == | ||
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=== Step One - Acquiring Ubuntu === | === Step One - Acquiring Ubuntu === | ||
First of all, you will need to download the latest released version of ubuntu, for our install we are going to use the desktop version of Ubuntu so that we have a fully working system, before we configure it for XBMC use. | First of all, you will need to download the latest released version of ubuntu, for our install we are going to use the desktop version of Ubuntu so that we have a fully working system, before we configure it for XBMC use. | ||
Go to | Go to [http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download] and download either the 32-bit or 64-bit version of ubuntu, depending on what architecture your target hardware is. Once you have the .iso you'll either need to install it to a usb pen drive or on a CD, either is fine but out of scope for this tutorial. | ||
Once you have Ubuntu burnt to a USB stick or CD, pop it in your target hardware and boot it up! Install Ubuntu just using the default options for everything, unless you have a reason not to. Although make sure to give yourself a unique username and strong password. | Once you have Ubuntu burnt to a USB stick or CD, pop it in your target hardware and boot it up! Install Ubuntu just using the default options for everything, unless you have a reason not to. Although make sure to give yourself a unique username and strong password. | ||
Revision as of 23:53, 19 September 2011
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A basic but sane way of building an XBMC install on top of Ubuntu
What you will need
* one Ubuntu desktop install. [[1]]
Step One - Acquiring Ubuntu
First of all, you will need to download the latest released version of ubuntu, for our install we are going to use the desktop version of Ubuntu so that we have a fully working system, before we configure it for XBMC use. Go to [2] and download either the 32-bit or 64-bit version of ubuntu, depending on what architecture your target hardware is. Once you have the .iso you'll either need to install it to a usb pen drive or on a CD, either is fine but out of scope for this tutorial. Once you have Ubuntu burnt to a USB stick or CD, pop it in your target hardware and boot it up! Install Ubuntu just using the default options for everything, unless you have a reason not to. Although make sure to give yourself a unique username and strong password.
Step Two - Acquiring XBMC
Installing XBMC is fairly simple, type the following command into a terminal
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc
This will add the latest release of xbmc to your repository list, if you are feeling somewhat adventurous you add the latest unreleased version with the following command
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc-svn
Once you have the repository of your choice installed you can go ahead and update the system, then install xbmc
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install xbmc
Step Two and a half
At this point you may wish to make sure you have your graphics drivers installed. head to System -> Administration -> Additional Drivers - This will present a nice interface for grabbing the right hardware drivers that you may need for your machine, especially Nvidia users.
You may also want to take this opportunity to test that xbmc is working. you can launch it from the Applications -> Sound and Video menu.
Step Three, some light pruning
One of the problems with starting from a desktop install of Ubuntu is that you have some rather large applications installed. Whilst leaving them installed won't cause any problems, we don't need them and removing them will reduce the size of updates. So go to Applications -> Ubuntu Software Center (bottom of the menu) and remove anything from the Installed Applications that you feel you don't need. Of note would be OpenOffice.
Step Four - Set up an XBMC login session
Here is where things get more complicated, so lets make it easy. What we want to achieve is an install that boots straight into xbmc when you start the machine up. To set about achieving that we are going to create a separate user to log into and a separate XBMC session.
Use the Users and Groups tool in System -> Administration to create a new user, make its name xbmc. it will then ask you for a password, Make note of the "Don't ask for password on login" box, but for now, leave it unchecked. We now have our xbmc user.
Now we need to build a session for xbmc so that we can log directly into that. Create a file called xbmcGDM that contains the following and place it in your home directory - this is the small script that will launch our xbmc instance.
#!/bin/bash pulseaudio --start ; xbmc
now run this command - it will copy that file to the place it needs to be.
chmod +x xbmcGDM; sudo mv ~/xbmcGDM /usr/bin/xbmcGDM
After we have that in the correct place, we can create our session. create a new file in your home directory and call it xbmc.desktop, make sure it contains the following
[Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Name=XBMC Comment=XB media center Exec=/usr/bin/xbmcGDM Icon= Type=Application
now run the following command, again to get this file to the correct place
sudo mv ~/xbmc.desktop /usr/share/xsessions/xbmc.desktop
Great, we now have an XBMC session. lets test it out. log out of your current user and select the XBMC user to log into. however don't log into it yet! at the bottom of the screen is a check-box with your current session in it, it should say Gnome. change that to xbmc. now put in your password and log in. you should start directly into xbmc. Log out again by selecting the quit option in XBMC.
- Note, you can also log into the gnome xbmc user session, if you need to make any tweaks like setting the audio output to HDMI audio - just make sure to set it back to the xbmc session before following the next step.
Step Five - Wrap up
Now finally all that there is left to do is make sure that we are auto-logging into the xbmc session. so log back into the gnome session of your root user. go to system -> administration Login Screen. Unlock the interface and use the Log in as <username> automatically radio item to set the auto-login to the xbmc user.
Congratulations, you now have XBMC auto-starting on your ubuntu install :-)